Conventionally, movies, television dramas, etc., have been shot in accordance with scenarios (scripts) created based on storyboards, for example. The scenario has its title (name), and consists of a plurality of scenes. Also, the scene consists of a plurality of cuts. A director provides directions in accordance with the scenario, and performers, such as actors, actresses, and extras, act in accordance with descriptions in the scenario. In the cases of, for example, live stage acts and concerts, performance is carried out in order of scenes specified in the scenario. On the other hand, in the cases of movies, dramas, etc., shooting is rarely carried out in order of scenes specified in the scenario.
Accordingly, in many cases, each video cut is shot in a condition or state different from conditions or states for video cuts before and after that video cut. As a result, a piece of video footage might be made out of a series of artificial video cuts connected in an unnatural manner. In some cases, erroneous editing that misses such unnatural connections might ruin the work (movie). Therefore, in order to prevent erroneous editing, it is necessary to take records of scene shooting, and appropriately manage shot scene information.
Editing after scene shooting is an extremely labor- and time-consuming task. Concretely, original content (video, audio, data) stored in a master medium, which has video scenes recorded thereon, is initially selected in accordance with the intent of a content creator with reference to the shot scene information recorded in handwriting by a scripter, an assistant director, or the like. For example, a film, tape, or optical disk, or a card employing flash memory, can be used as the master medium.
The selected original content is then subjected to edit processing, such as synthesizing. Thereafter, a movie or drama is completed through reconnection of the content subjected to edit processing. As described above, editing after shooting is an extremely labor- and time-consuming task. Therefore, there has been some demand to improve the efficiency of the editing task.
To meet the demand to improve the efficiency of the editing task, Patent Document 1 proposes a metadata input method and an edit system. Specifically, when generating content-related metadata or tagging content with metadata, keywords, which have been previously extracted from, for example, the scenario for the created content, are inputted by voice. Thereafter, a dictionary genre and the priority order of the keywords are determined in accordance with the scenario, and the metadata is generated by voice recognition means. This method employs voice recognition to allow efficient metadata assignment, even if the metadata is assigned at intervals of a few seconds, which is difficult to achieve by key input. The metadata can also be used as a keyword(s) for scene search.
In addition, a device for analyzing scenario information, as described in Patent Document 2, is known. This device includes a scenario information storage portion, a reference information storage portion, a calculation portion, and an output portion. The information storage portion stores scenario information sorted by scene. The reference information storage portion stores reference information concerning data contained in the scenario information. The calculation portion extracts data from the scenario information, and calculates output information based on the extracted data and the reference information before outputting to the output portion.
Based on data contained in the scenario and reference information related to that data, the scenario information analyzing device thus configured is capable of automatically calculating and outputting output information, such as an appropriate shooting schedule, as well as analyzing the scenario information. Thus, it is possible to shorten a time period for arranging a shooting schedule, as well as to expeditiously complete shooting by carrying out the shooting in accordance with the outputted shooting schedule, making it possible to reduce the cost of shooting.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent No. 3781715    Patent Document 2: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-362610